What We’re Reading, Week of 10/26

From A Small Change…
Drowning in Agendas
A great post from Jason at A Small Change that we can all relate to. He discusses the need to balance the time that we spend meeting about a topic and actually acting on it.

From AFP Blog…
Churches connect with parishioners online
AFP posts this quick but interesting tidbit about how churches are vying for younger parishioners online.

From NTEN…
Measuring Organizational Influence In Social Media
A must-read article from NTEN about quantifying the time, effort, and resources your organization is putting into its social media program.

What We’re Reading, Week of 10/12

From Acronym…
What have your members taught you?
A great way to wind down week! This post from Acronym reminds us that we should not only look at what we can DO for association members, but what we can LEARN from them.

From AFP Blog…
New Video Series Helps Exempt Organizations Understand Redesigned Form 990 Requirements
AFP posted a link to a helpful video for exempt organizations that explains recent changes to the Form 990.

From NTEN…
Blog Action Day 2009 Climate Change: Technology in the Climate Movement
NTEN and 9,427 other blogs from 150 countries with 12,896,974 readers are smashing the debate  about what impact the online world has on offline action with these numbers and think about the over 12 million people around the world who are raising their consciousness about climate change. NTEN posts some highlights.

What We’re Reading, Week of 9/21

From A Small Change…
Musings on the Future of Fundraising
Jason at A Small Change writes about the changing landscape of fundraising and his predictions for the future.

From Beth’s Blog…
How to translate social listening into good twitter conversation that supports your objectives
Beth Kanter takes a look at how organization’s can better utilize social listening (the practice of using social networking sites to listen to their members and potential donors) and turn that into constructive communications via Twitter.

From Acronym…
How secure is that golden handcuff?
An interesting article about how organizations should approach at their “golden handcuff” (a program or product so important to a member that it effectively binds them to the organization).

From NTEN…
Online Donors: Why They Leave and How to Win Them Back
NTEN takes a look at an interesting problem and opportunity when it comes to online donors which they have dubbed “the young and the generous” (they tend to be under 40 and their gifts are around $100).

What We’re Reading, Week of 9/14

From NTEN…
IT Alignment Is Mission Alignment
An interesting article discussing ways in which IT departments can “realign” themselves to better ensure that they are well placed and helping to achieve a myriad of goals across the company.

From Beth’s Blog…
Dear Causes: Please Share Your Cause Exit Survey Data With Nonprofits
Beth Kanter takes a look at Facebook causes and a surprising feature that should prove useful to organizations who do outreach through causes.

From Acronym…
Why should members join?
Acronym from ASAE poses the questions for readers to sound off on, “Why should members join?” See what people have to say.

From The Chronicle of Philanthropy…
Followers and Friends Not the Only Measure of Nonprofit Success Online
Are non-profits using social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook successfully? This is the charge posed by marketer Seth Godin, though Peter Panepento (the author of the post) disagrees.

What We’re Reading, Week of 8/24

From A Small Change…
Building Community Online
This post from Jason at A Small Change blog takes a look at how organizations should go about building their online community by, in part, creating an intentional culture that fit the various cultures of your donors.

From Acronym…
Facebook fundraising: Feeding America shows good taste
Acronym from ASAE examines the effectiveness of one of the early adopters using Facebook for fundraising. To do this they look at Feeding America’s (formerly Second Harvest) latest campaign on Facebook, a “virtual Sandwich Swap n’ Share” involving the unusual duo of Hellmann’s and Best Foods Mayonnaise with musician Billy Ray Cyrus.

From Beth’s Blog…
Seven Thoughts on Slacktivism
This guest post by Ali Cherry of Beaconfire Consulting takes a look at the growing trend of “Slactivism”, the act of participating in obviously pointless activities as an expedient alternative to actually expending effort to fix a problem

From NTEN…
The Shrinking Generational Digital Divide
Sami Hassanyeh of AARP contributes this post looking at trends in demographics of the use of technology and where these are headed. Some of the findings about current usage demographics may surprise you (they did us)!

What We’re Reading, Week of 7/20

From AFP Blog…
InfoSpace Launches Charity Search Engine
Linking to an article that appeared on www.seattlepi.com, the latest AFP Blog post discusses the launch of a new search website specifically focused on charity. www.DoGreatGood.com is the engine’s name. It will compile search results from Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and will donate money to charity when used. This represents an innovative new fundraising technique that internet-savvy non-profits may benefit from.

From Beth’s Blog…
The 4C’s of Social Media
Beth’s Blog features a guest post by Gaurav Mishra, in which he discusses the 4Cs of social media. Each “C” is an integral component of a strong social media offering. They are: Content, Collaboration, Community, and Collective Intelligence. Following this framework could provide nonprofit social media users with a reference point on how they can best establish and maintain their social media presence.

From NTEN: Non-Profit Technology Network
Passwords: The Biggest Lesson from the Twitter Hack
The latest NTEN blog post discusses the major Twitter hack that occurred last week. The avenue that the hackers used was very simple: they found a way to steal the passwords of Twitter employees. Though it might seem like a minor detail, the importance of creating strong passwords and changing them from time to time can’t be underestimated.

What We’re Reading, Week of 7/6

From Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog…
How to convince your skeptical boss that social media has merit
In her latest blog post, Katya gives social media advocates a few pointers on how to convince their bosses that social media is an effective tool for promoting and publicizing an organization. She recommends signing up skeptical bosses with Google Alerts and Tweetbeeps, setting clear and understandable social media policies, and sharing progress frequently. These tips could be quite helpful to those who want to bring social media into their organization, but need to gain upper-level support first.

From Non-Profit Communications…
Non-Profit Blogs: Five Reasons You Do & Don’t Need One
Kivi Miller runs through five reasons that starting a blog could be helpful for a non-profit- and five reasons why not. He illustrates the different ways that organizations can use blogs, whether they want to merely “share the small stuff” or react quickly to a crisis. However, he also shows that blogging has a downside: blogging can do more harm than good if the tone is wrong, updates are too few, and transparency is an issue. Non-profits should carefully weigh out the pros and cons of blogging; a useful tool for one non-profit could be a bad option for another.

From Your Non-Profit Technology Community: NTEN…
Four Reasons Innovations Matter Now More Than Ever
The NTEN blog offers advice about the importance of innovation in the non-profit sector. While acknowledging the tough competition within the sector as well as the impact of the recession, non-profits need to continuously focus on innovation by reevaluating business models, offering high-quality services, and finding ways to work around slashed budgets and reduced donations. It will be interesting to see which tactics and strategies will help non-profits to weather the storm and continue to operate successfully.

What We’re Reading, Week of 6/15

From AFP Blog: Nonprofit Technology…
Micropayments: Where Charity and Social Networks Meet – BusinessWeek
Linking to an article in BusinessWeek, the AFP Blog discusses a new form of philanthropy—Micropayments. Despite some of its hurdles, it will be interesting to see how its connection between charities and social networks will shape philanthropy.

From TechSoup…
Tips for Designing (or Redesigning) a Nonprofit Web Site
Designing a visually thought-out, informational website can be difficult. Chris Murphy offers tips to polish off your website—most important (and our favorite) no.1, Preliminary conversations. It’s important making sure all stakeholders are involved in the process.

From NTEN…
Cloud Computing 101: What You Need to Know
Not sure what exactly the cloud is? Rem Hoffmann and Rob Jordan provide organizations a quick 101 on cloud computing, and offer case studies of organizations that are using the cloud successfully.

What we’re reading, week of 5/18

From Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog…
What absolutely must go on your home page
In the continuing discussion of website essentials, Katya calls out the 10 most important things to display right up front. Our favorite is #3: “Clear, intuitive navigation that is organized according to the brain of the people who come to your website and NOT your org chart.”

From NTEN…
09NTC Session Materials – Now Online!
Didn’t get to attended the NTC this year? NTEN announces that over 120 of the conference sessions are now available online.

Also from NTEN…
Small is the New Big: 2009 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study Released
NTEN presents the 2009 eNonprofit Benchmark Study and an associated webinar – some great bits here for discussion and insight.

What we’re reading, week of 8/18

From Give & Take…
Making Charity Web Sites More Informative
More on a topic we love to discuss – the Chronicle offers some ideas about how nonprofits can become more transparent through their websites.

From NTEN…
Rate Your Donor Management Software
The survey is now open! Respondents can take this 5-10 minute survey to rate their donor management systems.

From Non-Profit Tech Blog…
More on Convio Not Going Public…
Allen Benamer points us to a Fortune Magazine article offering more explanation of Convio’s decision not to go public. “Personally, I would love for more nonprofit CRM vendors to go public,” says Allen. ”It makes it easier for me to cover them because of the added transparency.” Note the recurring theme here!

From A Small Change…
Raise Supporters Not Support
Jason Dick is back in action with a thoughtful post about the difference between fundraising and creating cause evangelists. Great reading. See also: Seth Godin on Sneezers.